Don’t Have Time For Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing is a rapidly shifting landscape that enhances your brand in numerous ways.

Social media marketing has many platforms that you can use and it can be confusing over which ones to use for your business. With it's ability to reach audiences social media marketing is rapidly positioning itself at the core of many brands marketing strategies. Despite the plethora of social platforms that seem to appear every few months, there are four or five main platforms that offer businesses a unique set of opportunities: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.

Facebook is now becoming more of a content network rather than a social network. It is as common to have a Facebook profile as much as an email address and phone number these days, and with users providing their geographic location, age, gender and listing their interests - making this an invaluable source of information to tailor campaigns towards. Facebook can be used to drive traffic to your site, increase brand awareness and consumer trust.

Despite Twitter's 140 character limit, this is a strength rather than weakness, as it's enables followers in today's mass-information world to consume succinct marketing messages. Using hashtags correctly, your messages can be discovered by people not even following your account. Furthermore Twitter is fully searchable, you can discover what people are saying about your brand and contact them (publicly) and boost or defend your brand (if the comment is negative).

LinkedIn is the business networking platform and ideal to share your brand's knowledge and expertise to people who are searching for business opportunities. Although primarily B2B, people trust recommendations and feedback on LinkedIn than what you write on your own website. LinkedIn groups also provide fantastic opportunity to discuss the problems and solutions that people and competitors talk about.

Pinterest is one of the most used social networks globally, if you offer visual products and services your business must be on this platform. Why? Well Pinterest is keyword searchable, any images or infographics that you create will appear in people's search results. "Pinners" can "repin" your image or board to their own accounts. If others search their accounts, your visual content will be prevalent, increasingly driving traffic to your website.

Google+ still represents a mystery for many social media users - many people still question if their business should bother. Yet Google+ compliments your local business and SEO - when people search for your company online, Google will rank your posts alongside it's information on Google My Business. Whilst it certainly has not reached the heights of interaction that Facebook or Twitter has, it should not be ignored.

Social media marketing is very time consuming, especially if you want to do it well. Yes you can automate posting to these networks with the various scheduling tools available, but to maximise your brand awareness and customer retention efforts it needs to be managed daily. Plus only posting your content will just irritate users, social media is also about reposting informative and entertaining content (even from competitors) to your users.

Increasingly companies are posting images and photographs of their teams at work, representing a "human" element to their business that is paramount to consumer buying decisions. Furthermore to really reach consumers, social media advertising is an excellent way to reach consumers beyond those who do not follow your brand.

Why not chat to the team at Blu Mint Digital about social media marketing and hear how we can schedule your content, suggest which platforms to use and managing ad campaigns.